When IBM announced its intention to acquire HashiCorp for $6.4 billion on Wednesday at market close, it was easy to conclude that the two companies should fit well together, but a deal comes down to more than strategy. In his meeting with analysts after Wednesday's announcement, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna saw HashiCorp as a critical piece of IBM's hybrid cloud management strategy, especially as it relates to generative AI. IDC analyst Stephen Elliot sees many companies using both Red Hat and HashiCorp infrastructure automation tools already, and putting the two sets of tools together makes sense for IBM.